The present invention relates to digital-to-analog conversion. More particularly, the invention pertains to the minimization of spurious signal components in high speed digital-to-analog converter (DAC) outputs.
A commonly employed architecture for the implementation of fast-hopping frequency synthesizers consists of a digital sine wave generator driving a DAC. The spurious frequency content of the analog output (i.e. non-fundamental energy) of the DAC is a critical performance standard for such synthesizers. Existing DACs have failed to provide the level of performance required by most high performance systems. This is especially true for wide band (on the order of greater than 50 MHz bandwidth) fast-hopping synthesizer systems.
Removal of spurious signals from the DAC output is often referred to as "deglitching." I am unaware of any published monolithic DACs incorporating the unique deglitcher function of my invention, nor am I aware of any such circuitry for achieving the high performance demonstrated by the circuitry described herein.